Love Worth Fighting For
by onceuponasavacamarah
Summary: Neal Cassidy awakens after being rudely pulled away from his son and sent to a world of unconsciousness by a group of lost boys. When he has a chance to catch up with Emma and the gang, he is sorely disappointed at the sight he beholds. One-Shot. Nealfire Emotions.


Neal Cassidy was unreservedly and utterly engulfed in darkness.

Darkness so thick that you could almost bottle it up and cast it on any being like a spell. Darkness so lifeless that death was close enough to touch. Your eyes not granting you the sight you need, or your body performing the functions you need them to meet. In this darkness you feel alone and are alone without emotion, without movement, without life. There is pain you cannot feel and thoughts that you long to think of, but are vanished away like a long forgotten past. Everything is blank and full of nothingness. A nothingness that came from a blinding collision to the head and an encounter with the forest floor.

And this was the nothingness Neal Cassidy found himself dead in the center of.

The darkness took him as hostage for hours; hours that seems to last for eternity. Neal during this eternity fought to gain back the consciousness he needed, but he couldn't move against the hold the blackness around him. He tried to feel or at least think of why he needed to wake, but why did he want to escape the peace and the armistice he was surrounded by?

It was a small thought that came to his mind, like a seed planted in emptiness, in where – after a long eternity – he slowly gained back his strength. He moved his fingers, and then his hands, fighting the urge within in himself to leave this death hole. The sounds of a forest played in his ears as the blackness around him began to turn a ghostly white. That small thought then grew to a multitude of flashbacks.

_A woman's soft smile. Her lips reading, "I love you." The press of those lips against his own. His heart bleeding after letting her go. Her presence vanishing away. The collision he had with the woman on a dirty city street. His smile as he looked again at this woman. Holding over his shoulder a young boy. A sharp pain hitting his chest and betrayal that crushed his heart. The woman holding his hand not wanting to let go. The feeling of falling into a dark unknown. Seeing a chance to win back that love. Holding his boy again over his shoulder. The dragging of his own body away from his boy. A crunch against his skull._

Neal pulled himself out of the dark unexpected sleep that overtook him so aggressively that he screamed out that first thought that brought him back to life in the first place.

"EMMA!"

The noise echoed so abruptly through the woods, that the birds overhead took a nervous flight abroad and wakened the forest itself. Neal found himself leaned up against a tree for balance with his hands completely free of bonds like before, for there was no lost boy in sight. He felt the sharp sting above his brow and the caked blood that must have run down his face during the night. What scheme Peter Pan had set in mind for him to be left unattended and thoroughly free, Neal had no idea, but he picked up himself quickly and observed his surroundings before a lost boy could possibly return.

With one quick glance around his surroundings, Neal knew exactly where he was placed on the island. Stepping in front of the entrance to the cave he spent a majority of his stay upon this island not so long ago, he immediately realized that his somewhat home just received visitors.

And they weren't lost boys.

"Emma?"

The sound bounced off the walls as he entered the cave and tried to adjust his eyes in the dim light.

"Emma, are you in here?"

The cave was a bit dark for the eyes to really grasp a hold of anything within its stone walls, but Neal knew that it was empty. He sighed to himself, but carefully reminisced as he looked around his old hiding place. As the sunlight started to pour more and more into the cave, he just had to simply smile as he stepped farther into the cave.

"Smart girl," he said while looking at a smallish stone table that was somewhat in the center of the cave.

His coconut; his map was gone.

Racing up the pathway covered in tracks made by a party of five, Neal knew Emma and a group of others were only a short distance away. The prints were unquestionably not lost boys, so his fear of her being a captive quickly fled his mind. The only doubt that flooded his mind was if she really still loved him after all that time. He reminded himself of the last words that she spoke to him as she gripped tight his hand, not wanting to let go.

_"I Love You."_

And he knew that she had spoken them from her heart.

From a long distance away Neal could see them farther down the cliff. Mary Margaret, David, and Regina grouped around each other in a heated conversation; the typical relationship of the three. His heart felt twisted and sick as he saw not only Emma separated from the group, but Captain Hook right by her side. The conversation needed no words to be heard, but only eyes to see what they felt towards each other. Captain Hook and Emma's kiss was passionate, and everything Neal hoped for himself upon his return, but he was too late. The heart of his beloved was stolen by another and it seemed as if it didn't take her long to get over his supposed death. He wanted to scream, to run to her, embrace her, and once again feel those soft lips that he missed ever so much against his own.

But there was that pirate.

The very same pirate that stole away his mother, spilt apart the family that he so rightly deserved, and that now supposedly stole away the heart that he longed to win back. His heart began to beat wildly, the rage within him began to build, but he turned his head to escape the torment he felt within. He felt the tears that stung his eyes and the heat that escaped from his hands being clenched too tightly. He painfully looked up again at the sight of the two that finally broke away from each other. He didn't deserve Emma, for he knew that. What he didn't know was half of the pain that he caused her over the years, yet the truth remained that he still loved her and still longed to have Tallahassee with her.

He watched her move away from the pirate and smile as she walked towards to where her parents were. Maybe this was her happy ending. Maybe he'd better not show himself alive again to her, so that her pain might heal in the arms of Hook. But in the arms of Hook?

Neal never wanted to be considered a coward just like his father. He knew that in the instance he stepped away from Emma, that he would brand himself as a coward. He had a second chance and he was willingly to take it. Whether Emma would take him back or not, he was going to try.

Because Emma is worth fighting for.


End file.
